Intentional action in folk psychology: An experimental investigation

Abstract

Abstract:Four experiments examined people's folk-psychological concept of intentional action. The chief question was whether or not evaluative considerations -considerations of good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame -played any role in that concept. The results indicated that the moral qualities of a behavior strongly influence people's judgements as to whether or not that behavior should be considered 'intentional.' After eliminating a number of alternative explanations, the author concludes that this effect is best explained by the hypothesis that evaluative considerations do play some role in people's concept of intentional action.

Variations in judgments of intentional action and moral evaluation across eight cultures

“…This asymmetry in intentional action attributions has been replicated with other scenarios (Knobe, 2003b;Knobe & Mendlow, 2004;Mallon, 2008;Nadelhoffer, 2004aNadelhoffer, , 2006Shepard & Wolff, 2013;Uttich & Lombrozo, 2010;Wright & Bengson, 2009), with children as young as four years (Lesle, Knobe, & Cohen, 2006), with participants who suffer from deficits in emotional processing due to lesions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Young, Cushman, Adolphs, & Hauser, 2006), and, for at least some versions of the scenarios, with adults with high functioning autism or Asperger's (Zalla & Leboyer, 2011;Zalla, Machery, & Leboyer, 2010). The asymmetry has also been reported with word changes in the original script introducing varying concepts such as intention and intending (McCann, 2005), deciding, being in favor of, advocating for (Pettit & Knobe, 2009), knowledge (Beebe & Buckwalter, 2010), belief (Beebe, 2013;Tannenbaum, Ditto, & Pizarro, 2007), awareness (Tannenbaum et al, 2007) remembering (Alfano, Beebe, & Robinson, 2012), and desire (Guglielmo & Malle, 2010;Tannenbaum et al, 2007).…”

“…For example, numerous findings report that people are much more likely to judge that bad outcomes are brought about intentionally compared to good outcomes, the socalled side-effect effect or Knobe effect (original research by Knobe, 2003aKnobe, , 2003bKnobe, , 2005Knobe, , 2006Knobe, , 2010Knobe & Mendlow, 2004; see additional studies by Cova & Naar, 2012;Cushman & Mele, 2008;Ditto, Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2009;Lanteri, 2012;Nadelhoffer, 2004aNadelhoffer, , 2004bNadelhoffer, , 2005Nadelhoffer, , 2006Pellizzoni, Girotto, & Surian, 2010;Sousa & Holbrook, 2010;Wright & Bengson, 2009). The side-effect effect has been claimed to reflect deep and fundamental facts about human cognition.…”

Neural evidence for “intuitive prosecution”: The use of mental state information for negative moral verdicts

“…Prior behavioral work, for example, has shown that participants judge impulsive crimes (e.g., crimes of passion) as less morally blameworthy than deliberate or premeditated crimes but impulsive and deliberate charitable behavior as equally morally praiseworthy (D. Pizarro, et al, 2003). In other research, participants have been shown to attribute greater intent to agents bringing about negative versus positive side-effects (Knobe, 2003(Knobe, , 2005. In one example, a CEO implements a profitable program, foreseeing that he will help / harm the environment as a side-effect of his action, though he has no intention to help / harm the environment.…”

Morality constrains the default representation of what is possible

“…Finally, it is worth noting a potential connection between our research and the widespread, surprising presence of moral norms in disparate corners of the human mind: e.g., in causal reasoning and mental state attribution (10,25,26,29,36). These processes also involve reasoning over a set of possibilities.…”